Hardwood Flooring or Carpet
Selecting the best flooring fit for your space is pertinent for a happy and healthy home. When deciding between hardwood flooring or carpet consider these factors that might influence your decision.
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Hardwood Flooring or Carpet: Durability and Cost
Looking for something long-lasting and durable?
The natural and resilient nature of hardwood provides for an enduring flooring solution that can undergo more wear and tear than carpet. Distressed texturing can hide small marks as well as be refinished, restoring it to its original look that may have been faintly lost with time.
With a lifespan of just five to ten years, carpet is not a long-lasting solution. Stains, spots, and damage will be easily visible and nearly impossible to eliminate without removing the entire carpet.
Is cost a concern?
When considering costs, take into account the lifespan of flooring and its correlation to overall costs. While hardwood does have a larger initial investment, it lasts exponentially longer with proper care. For a thirty-year lifespan, carpet will need to be replaced three to six times, or more, which requires at least three to six material purchases, at least three to six flooring removals, and at least three to six installation costs among other fees. In that same timespan, hardwood flooring may only require one flooring removal, one material purchase, and just one installation cost.
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Hardwood Flooring or Carpet: Cleaning and Maintenance
Are allergies or health a concern?
Hardwood flooring has been extensively studied by the Environmental Protection Agency due to its positive effect on air quality. Wood floors are hypoallergenic, do not harbor dust, dirt, mites, or grime, and can be cleaned much more easily and inexpensively. Hardwood is also a carbon-neutral product which removes carbon dioxide from its surrounding environment, making the area it is installed in a much greener space!
Carpet can harbor allergens, debris, mites, and mold. With less cleaning comes more opportunities for pollutants settling within its fibers, potentially causing illness to you, your family, friends, or pets. The Environmental Protection Agency found that carpet acts as a reservoir for “dust, dirt, pollen, mold spores, pesticides, and other materials. … Studies indicate that poorly maintained carpet can release significant quantities of particles into the air during the course of daily activity. In addition, young children may play on carpet where they may be more likely to come into contact with contaminants.” Carpet can also emit a cocktail of chemicals (VOCs or Violate Organic Compounds, that have the potential to negatively affect health.
How much time do you have to spend on cleaning?
While hardwood flooring does require more frequent cleaning than carpet, dirt, crumbs, and debris are much easier to clean off and spills can easily be wiped up.
Carpet hides the appearance of dirt and muck, so it does need to be cleaned less often, however over time it accumulates. Due to its texture, carpet is also much more difficult than hardwood. This can leave it be riddled with permanent stains and a buildup of grime or dust mites which can potentially cause illness to you, your family, pets, and guests.
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Hardwood Flooring or Carpet: Your Home and the Enviroment
Does environmental sustainability influence your decisions?
Hardwood flooring comes from one of our planet’s most sustainable resources – Trees! At Garrison Collection, we take pride in maintaining replenished forests and plant new trees to compensate for those harvested. Within American hardwood forests, there is nearly twice as much new wood growth as there is wood removed during harvest. This means that there are far more trees being planted and currently growing than trees being cut down.
Every year, nearly five billion pounds of carpet are sent to landfills where they take hundreds to thousands of years to degrade. Even then, their impact on the environment continues as 92-95% of carpets are made of plastic, which can poison the environment around them as they break down. Carpet recycling centers are limited in number with just 58 outside of California.
Are you ever considering selling your home?
With the future of flooring moving towards hard surfaces, swapping carpet for hardwood flooring can increase your home’s value and potentially raise its selling price by 3-5%. In addition, homes with hardwood flooring sell faster and more easily than those without.
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